Commercial computer networks, such as the Internet, have been used as a means of facilitating ordering of books and other reading material by consumers. This is typically achieved by presenting a web site-based user interface to consumers to allow them to order reading material such as books. One example of this is the website Amazon.com. However, the reading material that can be purchased by users of these systems are the same as the offering made by a traditional book store. That is, each item of reading material is usually offered in only one format. Further, users must wait whilst the reading material they ordered is retrieved from a warehouse and shipped to them.
The distribution of electronic documents is generally known and is described, for example, in International Publication No. WO 00/72235 A1 (Silverbrook Research Pty Ltd, 30 Nov. 2000). Silverbrook describes text being formatted in the Extendable Mark-up Language (XML) using the Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL). However, Silverbrook enables only a single user choice for formatting, namely larger presentation.